the YellYo.com Blog

In this day and age, bands are putting too much stock in MySpace. The era of printing and posting flyers across your local area to promote a show is a fading memory. Instead, bands are relying on bulletin posts and event invitations on MySpace, assuming they have sufficiently promoted their show and should have a great turnout. However, your “friends” on MySpace may not even know who you are, may be three countries away, may not care a bit about your bulletin or event invitation, and possibly just wanted to increase their friend count when they accepted your friend request. There also used to be a time when bands would consider it integral to have a website, but that also has fallen by the wayside because of the ease and lack of cost when it comes to having a MySpace page.

Let me pause to clarify a few things. I do not advocate any band ditching its MySpace page entirely. I am not recommending that bands stop sending bulletins or invitation requests to announce an upcoming show or event. And I am not indicating that those who do the things discussed in the first paragraph are lazy…but I’m not not saying that either. The deciding factor there can be determined with the answer to one question: Outside of MySpace, what else are you doing to promote your shows, merchandise, and music? And if you’re not sure how reliant you are on MySpace as a “one-stop shop” for your promotional needs, ask yourself this: If MySpace went away today, how prepared would your band be to promote a show for tomorrow? This is why it’s so important to cut away from the umbilical MySpace noose in many aspects and do things above and beyond.

Here’s the breakdown of all the things any band should be doing in addition to MySpace. Of these things I am about to discuss, you may want to slap me and say, “duh…I already knew about all this stuff.” But if you’re not already doing these things, you may want to slap yourself as well.

Website
Does your band have a dedicated web presence, outside of a MySpace page? This is oftentimes overlooked because of the ease of setting up and maintaining a MySpace page. It has your music, pictures, tour dates and bio. But if anyone can setup a MySpace page, including a thirteen-year old girl in the Philippines who wants to start a blog about her extensive Bratz collection, what about having a MySpace page is setting you apart from the rest?

With your own website comes your own domain name (assuming you purchase one). Thus, instead of telling fans and industry professionals that they can find you at myspace.com/yourbandname, you can simply tell them to visit yourbandname.com. Another benefit to a website is the total customization of the layout. MySpace is bound by certain restrictions and layout elements. Yes, there are ways to create a custom MySpace page but the bottom line is that it’s still just a MySpace page and the limits and restrictions are still there. With your own website, there are no limits or restrictions other than those of the law. Even better, there are no banner ads.

Setting up a website is easier than you think. In fact, through YellYo.com, all paid members get advertisement-free website hosting, a domain name, and access to hundreds of easy-to-setup website templates (for those of you who do not know the first thing about website design). So if you haven’t taken advantage of this member benefit…what are you waiting for? (End shameless self-promotion here.)

Paper Still Works
It seems that with the addition of the MySpace bulletin, comment, and event invitation to our daily lives, bands have forgotten about the need to promote via the old-fashioned way: plastering your area with flyers. A flyer can promote a show, a CD, or simply promote your band name. Yes, you may have five-thousand “friends” on MySpace, but how many of them are from the area of your next show? Even if every one of your “friends” read your bulletin about a show this Friday, how many do you really think are going to attend? Chances are, if you’ve relied solely on MySpace up until this point, the attendance of your last show should answer that question.

The benefit to a paper promotion is that you are getting the advertisement and – most importantly – the band name out to people you might not otherwise meet on MySpace. Believe it or not, there are a lot of people out there who refuse to use MySpace and consider it a waste of time. So if you’re not doing something to reach those people, you are doing your band a great disservice because for all you know, those people may become your biggest fans and most reliable to attend the next gig. There are no guarantees with the paper promotion approach. Depending on your area, it may be less effective or more effective than the MySpace bulletin. But either way, you’ll sleep better on the night before the big gig knowing that you did all you could do to get the word out. And if even one new person (potential fan) shows up based on a flyer, isn’t that worth the effort? Because every band builds its fan base the same way: one person at a time.

Everyone Likes a Freebie
If you’ve already made a CD, you probably have high hopes of selling all of them and you may have even calculated the money your band will make in profit when all is said and done and all the CDs are sold. Reality check: you won’t be selling all of your CDs. Not because they’re not good enough or you don’t have interested buyers, but because you need to be giving away a good portion of your discs. For each band, this can be approached differently. But whether you’re doing a few handouts while onstage or after a set, or if you need to send out twenty discs to twenty different radio stations, it’s all good promotion.

Think about it. If you set up a booth to sell your CDs at your live show, you’re only going to sell to those who have the money to spend on it and were so blown away by your live performance that they simply must have your tunes blasting in their car every day for the next three weeks. However, if you give a handful of discs away at every show, you are guaranteeing that people will have your disc in-hand. Even if they’re not a huge fan of yours, they might give it to someone who will be a fan. Get your music out there. Get your name out there. At all costs. If you’re strictly in this for the money, you’re paving the road to disappointment.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 21st, 2008 at 11:55 am and is filed under Promotion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.